Channel Modeling and Performance Characterization of Underwater Visible Light Communications

Underwater visible light communication (UVLC) has emerged as an attractive complementary solution to long-range acoustic communication and is able to achieve much higher data speeds. In this paper, we investigate the transmission range limits of UVLC systems. We first develop a closed-form path loss expression as a function of transceiver parameters and the water type. We then utilize this new expression to determine the maximum achievable link distance for UVLC systems while satisfying a specified bit error rate. Finally, we provide extensive numerical results to demonstrate the achievable distances in pure sea, clear ocean, coastal water and harbor water.